Bridgewater and Raynham share community-wide read

One Book One Community members said readers should really be able to stick with the spring selection.The book is Stephen Puleo’s “Dark Tide” and tells the riveting true tale of the “Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.”And this time around it will actually be “one b...

One Book One Community members said readers should really be able to stick with the spring selection.

The book is Stephen Puleo’s “Dark Tide” and tells the riveting true tale of the “Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.”

“It’s a fabulous read,” said committee member Pam Hayes-Bohanan.

“You can’t put it down,” said committee member Gloria Moran.

They said the book has it all: suspense, heroes, bad guys, politics, a disaster and even a Bridgewater connection, but committee members are keeping mum about how the town figures in.

“Check out the book and find out,” said committee member Evelyn DeLutis.

And this time around it will actually be “one book two communities.” For the first time, Raynham will be joining Bridgewater in the One Book One Community selection, DeLutis said.

But, she said, she still considers it “one book one community” because the idea is to form a community of readers, and the binding power of books knows no geographic boundaries, she said.

The idea is to encourage everyone in both towns to read the same book at the same time and then get together for discussion groups and events that tie into the book – like a giant book club.

Copies of “Dark Tide” are already available at the Bridgewater Public Library, the Raynham Public Library and the Maxwell Library at Bridgewater State University. Or you can purchase the book at Scholar’s Bookstore and pass it on to a friend, committee members said.

The kick-off event will be a molasses cookie contest on March 5 at the Bridgewater Public Library, with Town Manager Troy Clarkson and town councilors as judges.

That will be followed by a discussion of immigration to Massachusetts in the late 1800s on March 23 at the Raynham Public Library with Janice Duffy of the Massachusetts State Archives.

Irish and Italian immigration figures prominently in the tale of the 2.3 million gallon molasses tank that exploded shortly after noon on Jan. 15, 1919 on Boston’s waterfront in the North End, killing 21 people and causing widespread destruction, members said.

So does fear of anarchists, corporate malfeasance and – of course – molasses.

You see, back then molasses was used for a lot more than just baking cookies and making rum, DeLutis said. It was used for munitions. So there were suspicions the explosion might not have been an industrial accident, the way a large manure purchase might send up a red flag today.

But, as the committee members would say, “Read the book!”

“All through it, you’re waiting to find out what happens next,” member Susan McCombe said.

And though “Dark Tide” isn’t a children’s book, kids from Williams Intermediate School, Raynham Middle School and George H. Mitchell Elementary School will be getting in on the act reading related books aimed at their age groups.

Page 2 of 2 - The kids from Williams and Raynham Middle School will be reading “Joshua’s Song,” a novel that takes place in the same era and involves the molasses flood, Williams Principal Nancy Kirk said.

It’s the story of a 13-year-old boy from a well-to-do family whose father dies during the flu epidemic, throwing the family into a tailspin, DeLutis said. Joshua has to leave school and get a job selling newspapers and finds himself in the North End when the molasses tank explodes.

And to find out what happens next, Kirk said, you guessed it, “Read the book.”

The culminating event of the “Dark Tide” community read will be a talk by the author of the book, Stephen Puleo, in the Horace Mann Auditorium at Bridgewater State University on April 25.

One Book One Community members are pretty sure he’ll have an auditorium full of rapt audience members who’ve – read the book.